In October she was betrothed to
J.G. Schlosser, who has already been noted as one of Goethe's sager
counsellors, and the marriage took place on November 1st. "I rejoice
in their joy," he wrote to Sophie von la Roche, "though, at the same
time, it is mostly to my own loss." Other friends, also, in the course
of the same year, he complains, were departing and leaving him in
dreary solitude. "My poor existence," he writes to Kestner, "is
becoming petrified. This summer everyone is going--Merck with the
Court to Berlin, his wife to Switzerland, my sister, and Fraeulein
Flachsland, you, everybody. And I am alone. If I do not take a wife or
hang myself, say that life is right dear to me, or something, if you
like, which does me more honour."[132] So in May he describes himself
as alone and daily becoming more so; in October as "entirely alone,"
and as indescribably rejoiced at the return of Merck towards the close
of the year.
[Footnote 132: _Ib._ pp. 82-3.]
CHAPTER IX
SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS
If, during the year that followed his return from Wetzlar, Goethe was
distracted by his wandering affections, he was no less divided in mind
by his intellectual ambitions.
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